We drink because the climate is miserable, and because we’re told not to

Ian B, a frequent commentator on this poor shambolic blog, has articulated what is possibly the main reason why socialism, and in its puritan calvinistic humourless form here in the Anglosphere, is so pernicious and life-threatening. he refers often to “Anglo-Socialism”, which I understand to be (correct me, Ian if I’m wrong) a mutated form of utopian idealism: this is one which calls upon the ordinary human instincts of helping someone over a bad patch, while adding the awful, European-Imperialist-Compulsive force of threats, burning in hell and even death for non-compliance, ultimately.

This stuff I just chanced on in a hurry in the Waily-Mail, but it highlights perfectly the sort of sniffy, high-minded tutt-tutting and censure of behaviours supposedly different from the Political Class (although I have my doubts there.) Furthermore, it is sexist: it implies that whereas “boys 11-15″ might binge-drink, it’s more “shocking” that girls should.

In my wilder moments, I’m inclined to float a new conspiracy-theory: that James Bazalgette brought proper sewage and clean drinking-water to “the masses” so that the Calvinist socialists could take away their alcohol. None of the “upper classes” would dare to drink water until at least this time.

Modern British boys and girls may well binge-drink (whatever that is: I suppose it just means they have had “several skinfuls”, as P G Wodehouse would say) because the Political Enemy-Class, through its media-brainwashing-arm, presents role-models who do just that and are deliberately well-reported as having done so – such as “foot ballists” and “celebrities”, in things called “clubs” – odd dark deafening places, with unfathomable names which are supposed to mean something “cool”.

The last “club” I entered was Annabel’s in Berkeley Square, in about 1988 (I think): it was before the days of credit-card-pin machines and one round of five drinks cost me £56.60….in cash: I made some excuses and left as soon as decency and politeness would let me. I can only imagine with horror the bills that today’s poor young people run up. A certain Tim Laughton MP was present in the party, who might be able to corroborate.

3 responses to “We drink because the climate is miserable, and because we’re told not to”

Your wild theory may not be so far from the mark. The Sanitation movement was a key component of the early Anglo-Socialist movement. Their primary interest is in improving mankind itself in a spiritual manner; the extinguishing of vices of all kinds (including the modern vices of “sexism”, “racism”, “homosexosodomophobia”, “towelheadophobia” etc) rather than the communist proleteriat, bourgeoisie stuff. Sanitation was expected to radically improve the moral character of the population, hence the zeal for it and the creation of municipal councils to manage it.

The idea of dirt and cleanliness is very important in our puritan society; “cleanliness is next to godliness” being thought to be literally true. We all use words like “clean” and “dirty” to describe moral issues. Dirty movies, dirty girls, etc. I’m not off the top of my head aware of anybody specifically saying that clean water==less beer drinking, but I imagine that would have been thought; also worth mentioning that prominent Anglo-Socialist John Cadbury- a Quaker, naturally- is well known to have gone into cocoa and chocolate to give the poor an alternative to beer. I find it mildly ironic that his temperance product is itself now denounced as causing obesitude, full of sugar, etc etc, which are also sins to the anglo-socialist.

The other choccie magnate was the Rowntrees, quakers also of course, whose Foundations have provided so much of the funding to the Enemy.

Cadbury of course was one of those Anglo-Socialist businessmen who provided dictatorship villages for his workers, forerunners of the proto-Greenist garden cities. Again, a great emphasis on cleanliness, and no pubs. The other obvious name here is Lord Leverhulme, the anglo-socialist Liberal Party MP who created Port Sunlight. He made his fortune of course from… soap.

We saw their ideas develop, in the twentieh century, into the Garden City Movement, New Towns and, of late, Broon’s “Eco-Towns”.

Sorry, I’ve forgotten what I was talking about. Oh yes, clean bodies, clean minds. Cleanliness is next to socialism. You find all these things bound together historically; sanitation, public health, temperance, puritanism. They’re determined to create utopia, a very particular kind, which many of us would not find very pleasant at all.

Ian I think the Nazis were into this cleanliness stuff too. All that healthy outdoor stuff, done in humungous crowds in places like Rugen island, the forerunner of Butlins. You can see the horrible vast Nazi holiday-flat-blocks still, on Rugen, on Google-Earth. They’re on the East side of the island, so everybody would be rousted out of bed at 03.20 am by the Morning Sun rising over, er….Sweden….

Yes David, very Nazi indeed. Asceticism seems to go with totalitarianism. Of course Nazism is a direct descendant of Germanic Romanticism, which scholars trace from Pietism. It seems to me there was a fundamental bifurcation in the “mind” of Christendom; on the one side, personal faith and on the other, collectivist faith. On the one side, the pursuit of self-betterment through Christ, on the other, the pursuit of bettering everybody else. Then the latter side threw Jesus away as unnecessary to the collectivist cause and embraced any madness they could find; socialism, communism, nazism, fabianism.

Both the Fabians and the Nazis grew out of spiritual post-Christian movements, that is, attempts to find a new spirituality. The Nazis from the Volkisch movement, the Fabians out of their “Society For The New Dawn” or whatever it was called. All looking for a new religion.